The Talisman (70 page)

“What’s to stop all these guys from coming in after me?”

“Shoo,
they
can’t go in the black hotel.” Disgust with Jack’s stupidity was printed in every line on Speedy’s face.

“I know, I mean in the water. Why wouldn’t they come after me with a boat or something?”

Now Speedy managed a painful but genuine smile. “I think you gonna see why, Travellin Jack. Ole Bloat and his boys gotta steer clear of the water, hee hee. Don’t worry bout that now—just remember what I told you and get to gettin, hear?”

“I’m already there,” Jack said, and edged toward the rocks to peer around at the beach road and the hotel. He had managed to get across the road and to Speedy’s cover without being seen: surely he could drag Richard the few feet down to the water and get him on the raft. With any luck at all, he should be able to make it unseen all the way to the pilings—Gardener and the men with binoculars were concentrating on the town and the hillside.

Jack peeked around the side of one of the tall columns. The limousines still stood before the hotel. Jack put his head out an inch or two farther to look across the street. A man in a black suit was just stepping through the door of the wreck of the Kingsland Motel—he was trying, Jack saw, to keep from looking at the black hotel.

A whistle began to shrill, as high and insistent as a woman’s scream.

“Move!” Speedy whispered hoarsely.

Jack jerked his head up and saw at the top of the grassy rise behind the crumbling houses a black-suited man blasting away at the whistle and pointing straight downhill at him. The man’s dark hair swayed around his shoulders—hair, black suit, and sunglasses, he looked like the Angel of Death.

“FOUND HIM! FOUND HIM!” Gardener bawled. “SHOOT HIM! A THOUSAND DOLLARS TO THE BROTHER WHO BRINGS ME HIS BALLS!”

Jack recoiled back into the safety of the rocks. A half-second later a bullet spanged off the front of the middle pillar just before the sound of the shot reached them.
So now I know,
Jack thought as he grabbed Richard’s arm and pulled him toward the raft.
First you get knocked down, then you hear the gun go off.

“You gotta go now,” Speedy said in a breathless rush of words. “In thirty seconds, there’s gonna be a lot more shootin. Stay behind the breakwater as long’s you can and then cut over. Get her, Jack.”

Jack gave Speedy a frantic, driven look as a second bullet smacked into the sand before their little redoubt. Then he pushed Richard down in the front of the raft and saw with some satisfaction that Richard had enough presence of mind to grasp and hang on to the separate rubbery tufts of the mane. Speedy lifted his right hand in a gesture both wave and blessing. On his knees Jack gave the raft a shove which sent it almost to the edge of the water. He heard another trilling blast of the whistle. Then he scrambled to his feet. He was still running when the raft hit the water, and was wet to the waist when he pulled himself into it.

Jack paddled steadily out to the break-water. When he reached the end, he turned into unprotected open water and began paddling.

4

After that, Jack concentrated on his paddling, firmly putting out of his mind any considerations of what he would do if Morgan’s men had killed Speedy. He had to get under the pilings, and that was that. A bullet hit the water, causing a tiny eruption of droplets about six feet to his left. He heard another ricochet off the breakwater with a
ping
. Jack paddled forward with his whole strength.

Some time, he knew not how long, went by. At last he rolled off the side of the raft and swam to the back, so that he could push it even faster by scissoring his legs. An almost imperceptible current swept him nearer his goal. At last the pilings began, high crusty columns of wood as thick around as telephone poles. Jack raised his chin out of the water and saw the immensity of the hotel lifting itself above the wide black deck, leaning out over him. He glanced back and to his right, but Speedy had not moved. Or had he? Speedy’s arms looked different. Maybe—

There was a flurry of movement on the long grassy descent behind the row of falling-down houses. Jack looked up and saw four of the men in black suits racing down toward the beach. A wave slapped the raft, almost taking it from his grasp. Richard moaned. Two of the men pointed toward him. Their mouths moved.

Another high wave rocked the raft and threatened to push both raft and Jack Sawyer back toward the beach.

Wave, Jack thought, what wave?

He looked up over the front of the raft as soon as it dipped again into a trough. The broad gray back of something surely too large to be a mere fish was sinking beneath the surface. A shark? Jack was uneasily conscious of his two legs fluttering out behind him in the water. He ducked his head under, afraid he’d see a long cigar-shaped stomach with teeth sweeping toward him.

He did not see that shape, not exactly, but what he saw astounded him.

The water, which appeared now to be very deep, was as full as an aquarium, though one containing no fish of normal size or description. In this aquarium only monsters swam. Beneath Jack’s legs moved a zoo of outsize, sometimes horrendously ugly animals. They must have been beneath him and the raft ever since the water had grown deep enough to accommodate them, for the water was crowded everywhere. The thing that had frightened the renegade Wolfs glided by ten feet down, long as a southbound freight train. It moved upward as he watched. A film over its eyes blinked. Long whiskers trailed back from its cavernous mouth—it had a mouth like an elevator door, Jack thought. The creature glided past him, pushing Jack closer to the hotel with the weight of the water it displaced, and raised its dripping snout above the surface. Its furry profile resembled Neanderthal Man’s.

Ole Bloat and his boys gotta steer clear of the water,
Speedy had told him, and laughed.

Whatever force had sealed the Talisman in the black hotel had set these creatures in the waters off Point Venuti to make sure that the wrong people kept away; and Speedy had known it. The great bodies of the creatures in the water delicately nudged the raft nearer and nearer the pilings, but the waves they made kept Jack from getting all but the most fragmentary view of what was happening on shore.

He rode up a crest and saw Sunlight Gardener, his hair flowing out behind him, standing beside the black fence levelling a long heavy hunting rifle at his head. The raft sank into the trough; the shell sizzled past far overhead with the noise of a hummingbird’s passing; the report came. When Gardener shot next, a fishlike thing ten feet long with a great sail of a dorsal fin rose straight up out of the water and stopped the bullet. In one motion, the creature rolled back down and sliced into the water again. Jack saw a great ragged hole in its side. The next time he rode up a crest, Gardener was trotting off across the beach, clearly on his way to the Kingsland Motel. The giant fish continued to wash him diagonally forward toward the pilings.

5

A ladder, Speedy had said, and as soon as Jack was under the wide deck he peered through the gloom to try to find it. The thick pilings, encrusted with algae and barnacles and dripping with seaweed, stood in four rows. If the ladder had been installed at the time the deck was built it might easily be useless now—at the least a wooden ladder would be hard to see, overgrown with weed and barnacles. The big shaggy pilings were now much thicker than they had been originally. Jack got his forearms over the back of the raft and used the thick rubbery tail to lever himself back inside. Then, shivering, he unbuttoned his sodden shirt—the same white button-down, at least one size too small, Richard had given him on the other side of the Blasted Lands—and dropped it squashily in the bottom of the raft. His shoes had fallen off in the water, and he peeled off the wet socks and tossed them on top of the shirt. Richard sat in the bow of the raft, slouching forward over his knees, his eyes shut and his mouth closed.

“We’re looking for a ladder,” Jack said.

Richard acknowledged this with a barely perceptible movement of his head.

“Do you think you could get up a ladder, Richie?”

“Maybe,” Richard whispered.

“Well, it’s around here somewhere. Probably attached to one of these pilings.”

Jack paddled with both hands, bringing the raft between two of the pilings in the first row. The Talisman’s call was continuous now, and seemed nearly strong enough to pick him up out of the raft and deposit him on the deck. They were drifting between the first and second rows of pilings, already under the heavy black line of the deck above; here as well as outside, little red flares ignited in the air, twisted, winked out. Jack counted: four rows of pilings, five pilings in each row. Twenty places where the ladder might be. With the darkness beneath the deck and the endless refinements of corridors suggested by the pilings, being here was like taking a tour of the Catacombs.

“They didn’t shoot us,” Richard said without affect. In the same tone of voice he might have said, “The store is out of bread.”

“We had some help.” He looked at Richard, slumped over his knees. Richard would never be able to get up a ladder unless he were somehow galvanized.

“We’re coming up to a piling,” Jack said. “Lean forward and shove us off, will you?”

“What?”

“Keep us from bumping into the piling,” Jack repeated. “Come on, Richard. I need your help.”

It seemed to work. Richard cracked open his left eye and put his right hand on the edge of the raft. As they drifted nearer to the thick piling he held out his left hand to deflect them. Then something on the pillar made a smacking sound, as of lips pulled wetly apart.

Richard grunted and retracted his hand.

“What was it?” Jack said, and Richard did not have to answer—now both boys saw the sluglike creatures clinging to the pilings. Their eyes had been closed, too, and their mouths. Agitated, they began to shift positions on their pillars, clattering their teeth. Jack put his hands in the water and swung the bow of the raft around the piling.

“Oh God,” Richard said. Those lipless tiny mouths held a quantity of teeth. “God, I can’t take—”

“You have to take it, Richard,” Jack said. “Didn’t you hear Speedy back there on the beach? He might even be dead now, Richard, and if he is, he died so he could be certain that I knew you had to go in the hotel.”

Richard had closed his eyes again.

“And I don’t care how many slugs we have to kill to get up the ladder, you are going up the ladder, Richard. That’s all. That’s it.”

“Shit on you,” Richard said. “You don’t have to talk to me like that. I’m sick of you being so high and mighty. I know I’m going up the ladder, wherever it is. I probably have a fever of a hundred and five, but I know I’m going up that ladder. I just don’t know if I can take it. So to hell with you.” Richard had uttered this entire speech with his eyes shut. He effortfully forced both eyes open again. “Nuts.”

“I need you,” Jack said.

“Nuts. I’ll get up the ladder, you asshole.”

“In that case, I’d better find it,” Jack said, pushed the raft forward toward the next row of pilings, and saw it.

6

The ladder hung straight down between the two inner rows of pilings, ending some four feet above the surface of the water. A dim rectangle at the top of the ladder indicated that a trapdoor opened onto the deck. In the darkness it was only the ghost of a ladder, half-visible.

“We’re in business, Richie,” Jack said. He guided the raft carefully past the next piling, making sure not to scrape against it. The hundreds of sluglike creatures clinging to the piling bared their teeth. In seconds the horse’s head at the front of the raft was gliding beneath the bottom of the ladder, and then Jack could reach up to grab the bottom rung. “Okay,” he said. First he tied one sleeve of his sodden shirt around the rung, the other around the stiff rubbery tail next to him. At least the raft would still be there—if they ever got out of the hotel. Jack’s mouth abruptly dried. The Talisman sang out, calling to him. He stood up carefully in the raft and hung on to the ladder. “You first,” he said. “It’s not going to be easy, but I’ll help you.”

“Don’t need your help,” Richard said. Standing up, he nearly pitched forward and threw both of them out of the raft.

“Easy now.”

“Don’t easy me.” Richard extended both arms and steadied himself. His mouth was pinched. He looked afraid to breathe. He stepped forward.

“Good.”

“Asshole.” Richard moved his left foot forward, raised his right arm, brought his right foot forward. Now he could find the bottom of the ladder with his hands, as he fiercely squinted through his right eye. “See?”

“Okay,” Jack said, holding both hands palm-out before him, fingers extended, indicating that he would not insult Richard with the offer of physical aid.

Richard pulled on the ladder with his hands, and his feet slid irresistibly forward, pushing the raft with them. In a second he was suspended half over the water—only Jack’s shirt kept the raft from zooming out from under Richard’s feet.

“Help!”

“Pull your feet back.”

Richard did so, and stood upright again, breathing hard.

“Let me give you a hand, okay?”

“Okay.”

Jack crawled along the raft until he was immediately before Richard. He stood up with great care. Richard gripped the bottom rung with both hands, trembling. Jack put his hands on Richard’s skinny hips. “I’m going to help lift you. Try not to kick out with your feet—just pull yourself up high enough to get your knee on the rung. First put your hands up on the next one.” Richard cracked open an eye and did so.

“You ready?”

“Go.”

The raft slid forward, but Jack yanked Richard upright so high that he could easily place his right knee on the bottom rung. Then Jack grabbed the sides of the ladder and used the strength in his arms and legs to stabilize the raft. Richard was grunting, trying to get his other knee on the rung; in a second he had done it. In another two seconds, Richard Sloat stood upright on the ladder.

“I can’t go any farther,” he said. “I think I’m going to fall off. I feel so sick, Jack.”